


Horizons in the black

by Munnin



Series: The Star Wars Write Stuff challenge. [30]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Death, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 09:39:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12105915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: The life and death of a TIE fighter pilot.





	Horizons in the black

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of a Star Wars prompt group. Prompt: Imperial pilot - Horizon
> 
> Story inspired by this [amazing piece of art](http://www.drewbaker.com/images/DrewBaker-Burden.jpg) by the very talented [Drew Baker](http://www.drewbaker.com/).

Danni had spent all her childhood looking up. To the stars, to the sky. Not to the horizon. 

Suliana was a small world in every way. Small in size. Small in trade and export. Small minded. Its almost perfectly balanced tilt and orbit meant the variations between seasons was so minuscule as to be unnoticeable. Clothing never changed, because it didn’t need to. One outfit suited the weather all year round. The work never changed, because farming virgin cotton was the only thing Suliana did. And did so well, techniques of planting and harvesting, storage and treatment, hadn’t changed in hundreds of years.

A world of perfectly suited to its niche. And utterly stagnated. 

Which was why Danni signed up to the academy as soon as she was old enough and hitched her way off-world without a single backward glance. 

For someone who had never driven anything more complicated than a landspeeder, she took to flying so naturally her instructors suspected she’d lied on her application. 

She made fighter pilot status in the absolute minimum time Imperial procedure would allow. 

She loved being in the black. There, nothing held her back. No gravity, no horizon. No ground-in tradition. 

And she took to Imperial life with ridiculous ease. The constancy of the environmental conditions aboard a Star Destroyer never bothered her the way other pilots complained of. She was use to weather that never changed. The food might have been dull, but there was never any lack of it. 

And things *changed* in the Empire. Every day there was a new challenge, new procedures to learn, new formations to practice. And with the Rebellion harrying them, there was always the change for action and excitement. She could take the days of drills and repetition because there was always going to be a day when something really *happened*.

Danni had never felt so alive in her life. 

She leaped out of her bunk at the sound of the call to stations alarm, flashing her bunkmate Serra a grin. “It’s a good day to fly.”

Serra scowled and pulled in her boots. She was never the instant waker Danni was. 

Danni ran ahead, not waiting for Serra. She caught a nod from the ground crew as she shimmied up the ladder to her TIE. They were not meant to have *their* ships. The rules said pilots were meant to take position according to their arrival at their station. But everyone had a ship they preferred. And unless they got busted for it, it was bad manners to take someone else’s.

The bucket-heads jokingly called them CJs. Coffin Jockeys. Because without shields, without life support, a TIE became your coffin if you screwed up. Part of being a TIE pilot was accepting that. Every time you went out, accepting your death. Every pilot had their own rituals – stashing good luck charms or other personal items in their cockpits or the pockets of their suits. Extra rations, pouches of illicit alcohol. Suicide pills.

If something went wrong and you were irretrievable, it was better to go fast than let it hurt. 

It was never taught in the Academy. Not by the instructors anyway. But older pilots taught the younger ones what they needed to know. How to rewire your sublight engines to blow if needed. How to override safeties. How to make it quick and clean. 

It usually took a near death experience to make the recruits believe. But once they did, it became part of their prelaunch checks to know they could reach for their own deaths if they needed to. 

It wasn’t as morbid as it seemed from the outside. It was just- something you did. Like a ritual. An unspoken prayer that if you had what you’d need, you’d never need to use it. 

Danni didn’t dwell on death, she accepted it. It was part of who she was – just as her black hair was. Like the scars from her first close call and the funny birthmark on her upper arm that sat almost perfectly under the Imperial cog on her shoulder. Death was a part of the uniform she put on every day. 

And that never scared her. Not even when the day came she needed to reach for death. 

She waited in her TIE, waited for her turn to launch, knowing each member of her squad as they launched ahead of her. Her hands moved almost without her mind, touching each systems check in turn. Checking what had already been checked three or four times. The motion centred her, made her more and more aware of the ship around her. Her coffin, her skin.

The black was thick with rebel ships, small and fast and oddly shaped to her mind. She knew them – the insectoid X wings and the ungainly looking Y wings. The stubby little A wings that were always faster than you expected. 

It was an A wing she was chasing when it happened. She knew they were fast so it was her job to keep them from getting too far away from the pack. Using her TIE’s manoeuvrability to keep the A wing pilot to getting the upper hand. 

It was a stray bolt, or so she hoped. Some rebel on the other side of the dogfight who had been fired on and dodged. Because she knew the shot who had come from another TIE. Friendly fire.

There wasn’t time for bitterness or recrimination. Not with the rip in her suit venting air over her left shoulder. She reached for the patch, sealing it as best she could. But the patch was too small, and she couldn’t see the tear to see how far under the backplate it went. At least she couldn’t smell her own burning skin, the rushing air pushing the scent away. It was a small thing to be grateful for.

All her boards were red. Stars were visible through the hole in the side of her cockpit. 

She went through all the steps of recovery as swiftly as she could, relying on muscle memory and training to override the tingling cold in her gloved hands. 

Shock. 

It was shutting her body down but not her mind. If anything, she was thinking clearer than ever. Processing the situation without panic or fear. As detached from the situation as she might have been watching someone else run a simulation. 

It was with that detached clarity she reached for the last solution. While others favoured small blasters or injectors, Danni kept a knife down the side of her chair. Small, neat; the durosteel blade silver and bright against the black interior of her cockpit. 

The motion of shaking off her glove and turning the knife her palm was not one she’d practiced, but it happened as neatly and cleanly as any trained manoeuvre.

As she looked down at the small world below them, looking past the dogfight with calm objectivity, she almost laughed as she recognised it. Half her life, she had looked past Suliana’s horizon. And now she would accept her death as she looked down at it. 

That shouldn’t have felt as right as it did.


End file.
